N. Americans snap up concert tix at deep discounts

* Resale tix on top music acts deeply discounted

* Secondary concert ticket market seen exceeding $700 mln

By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES, July 30 (Reuters) - Unemployment is up and
consumer confidence is down, but one silver lining of the
recession is that last-minute tickets to hear big acts like
Coldplay and Bruce Springsteen are as little as $1.

According to eBay Inc's (EBAY.O) StubHub, the leading
Internet ticket re-seller, last-minute concert ticket sales at
sharply lower prices are on the rise for acts like Paul
McCartney, Springsteen, Jonas Brothers, Coldplay, and U2.

"People often assume a secondary ticket site only offers
inflated prices, but it's very challenging right now," said
Sean Pate, a spokesman for San Francisco-based StubHub.

He said cheap prices were not showing up just for
"nosebleed" seats or lawn seats, but rather in all seat
locations for top performers.

"This trend of lower resale ticket pricing is very
variable. It's almost like a stock market and a barometer for
pricing city by city," he said.

He said fans have already purchased tickets as low as $1
for Springsteen and Coldplay, $9 for Kenny Chesney and $10 for
the Jonas Brothers this season, with tickets listing for as low
as $16 for upcoming McCartney shows this weekend in Maryland.

According to Pollstar, a concert industry trade magazine,
the concert industry in North America is off to another record
year, with the top 100 tours grossing a combined $1.6 billion
for the first half of 2009, up $113.5 million or 10.8 percent
over the same period in the first six months of 2008.

Indeed, the nation's leading concert promoter, Live Nation
Inc (LYV.N), said recently that U.S. concert ticket sales this
summer were surprisingly strong despite a weaker economy.

And Pollstar said the average ticket price hit $64.61 for
the top 100 acts, up 4 percent or $2.54 per ticket.

But Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni said prices will
likely be moderated in the second half due to heavy discounts
on general admission amphitheater lawn seats.

Live Nation has said sales were holding very strong, helped
by discounts like fee waivers it introduced as a recession-year
break for customers.

Many of the big tours are reportedly sold out through
vendors like Live Nation, but anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of
those tickets may find their way onto the secondary market on
sites like StubHub or craigslist.org, being sold by a
combination of ticket brokers and ordinary fans.

In some of these cases, given the economy, the tickets are
not re-selling for their face value and are therefore selling
for substantial bargain prices on the secondary market, Pate
said.

While average concert ticket prices on StubHub have fallen
12 percent since 2008, Pate said overall volume was up more
than 50 percent and thousands of tickets for shows like the
McCartney concerts have also commanded significant premiums.

Typically, sellers pay 15 percent of any completed
transaction through StubHub, which also collects another 10
percent fee on transactions.

Pate said for the entirety of his tour, McCartney seats
have averaged $242, with the range for the Maryland show
swinging from as low as $16 to as high as $1,053 a seat.

Similarly, veteran performers like the Eagles, Elton John
with Billy Joel and Eric Clapton have all fetched an average
ticket price of more than $200 to date this year, he said.
(Reporting by Sue Zeidler, editing by Matthew Lewis)